Article excerpt

MASSIVE new deployments of American force in the Persian Gulf
create a new level of risk and raise the question of whether we can
learn from other flash-point situations that faced this country.

The Cuban missile crisis in 1962 is an example. It helps to
remember that US participants in that crisis had information not
available to the informed public but still lacked conclusive data on
Soviet and Cuban actions. At the same time, the public was unaware
of the Kennedy administration's secret efforts to resolve the crisis
without the use of military force. Finally, both Soviets and
Americans made judgment errors in trying to analyze the intentions
and behavior of the other side. All these factors should give us
some pause in examining the current crisis in the Persian Gulf.

The Problem of Incomplete Information: It was unknown whether the
Soviets had actually deployed nuclear warheads to the island before
the US blockade was in effect. The conventional wisdom at the time
was that the nuclear nose cones were not in Cuba at the time, but 25
years later we learned that some warheads had arrived, none had been
mated to missiles, and Khrushchev had not ordered the firing of the
missiles even if attacked. We also learned only recently that the US
U-2 reconnaissance aircraft that was downed at the peak of the
crisis was shot down by a Soviet antiaircraft missile fired by
authority of local Soviet commanders and not the overall Soviet
commander in Cuba, against the orders of Defense Minister Marshal
Rodion Malinovsky who had given instructions to fire only if
attacked.

This raises questions about Iraqi capabilities in view of their
secret nuclear and chemical programs but, more important, their
willingness to use any weapons system in their battle against Iran.
It also raises issues about Iraqi command and control on the front
lines and the possibility of accidental launch.

JFK's Use of Diplomacy: President Kennedy presented a tough image
to the American public, but privately he took a series of
conciliatory steps to avoid the use of force. When Khrushchev
belatedly sought during the crisis to trade Soviet missiles in Cuba
for obsolescent US missiles in Turkey as a way out, Kennedy's
advisers told him that acceptance of such a proposal would have
meant a major diplomatic and political defeat for the
administration. Kennedy ostensibly agreed with them, but ordered
Secretary of State Dean Rusk that, if Khrushchev went public with
his offer, the United Nations Secretary-General, U Thant, should
"spontaneously" make a similar appeal that the US would accept. …